The Sumner-Carpenter House is located in a rural area east of Eastford center, on the north side of Old Colony Road just west of its crossing of Bungee Brook. It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, consisting of a main block and a series of additions. The main block has a hipped roof, with a side gable-roofed ell, apparently built either with or not long after the main block, with a gable roof, and a c. 1900 two story gable-roofed wing to the rear. The main facade is five bays wide, with a center entrance flanked by wide sidelights, and topped by a rounded transom and corniced entablature. The window above the entrance is in the Palladian style, with a rounded center window flanked by narrower sashes. The interior retains a number of original features, as well as sensitive reproductions of parts that were seriously deteriorated.[2]
The house was built c. 1806, probably by Vini Goodell who also built the Benjamin Bosworth House, for John Newton Sumner. It is a well-preserved local example of a rural Federal period residence, augmented by a modest collection of Colonial Revival outbuildings. The property was the centerpiece of a typically larger farm property that was one of the town's most successful. One late 19th-century owner, David Carpenter, was active in civic affairs, serving as town selectman and in the state legislature. The house underwent a historically sensitive restoration in the 1970s.[2]
